Wednesday, August 6, 2014

“5,000 Arms to Hold You.” is the name given to the Jerusalem installation by the American artists and identical twins Doug and Mike Starn which I visited the other day.

Following seven weeks of construction, “Big Bambu ” is open for visitors to climb and explore in the Billy Rose Art Garden at Jerusalem’s Israel Museum. The Starn brothers, together with an international team of rock climbers and an Israeli team specially chosen for the project, used 10,000 bamboo poles and 80 kilometers of climbing rope to create a structure-sculpture that covers 500 square meters of ground and rises 16 meters into the sky.

Standing in front of Big Bambu

The Starns have been active on the art scene since the 1980s. Previously, they created similar installations on the roof of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (2010), at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), the Museum of Modern Art in Rome (2012) and Japan’s Naoshima Museum (2013).
The Israel Museum installation is the largest in the “Big Bambu” series to date.

In each country, the installation acquires form and character from the local surroundings and context in accordance with interaction among members of the construction team. There is no preset plan for the work. According to the brothers, it takes its form from the dynamics that develop in the course of the construction process, embodying the tension between order and chaos.

Dangling between heaven and earth, the team lashed the bamboo poles together and created dozens of meters of trails that wind through the “bamboo forest,” along with observation decks – each of which has its own character and offers a unique view of the surrounding Jerusalem landscape.
Visitors can make their way along the ground amid the bamboo tangle, or follow the trails and contemplate their unusual surroundings on benches that are scattered both on the observation decks and between them. In addition to the new sight lines of Jerusalem, the climb through the installation offers a view of the heart of the ramified, chaotic structure.

I had fun climbing this bird nest and enjoying the views of the city from its observation decks.

Monday, August 4, 2014

This year, Passover and Easter fell during the same week. In addition, the Orthodox and Catholic churches celebrated Easter on the same date so the city was filled with celebrations. Though I usually avoid the crowds, this year I had the pleasure of experiencing some of the events and savouring the atsmosphere and colorful throngs of people celebrating Holy Week. You too can enjoy this via the pictures below. (Photos Courtesy of Jo M. Kearney.)

Priestly Blessing at the Western Wall

Hundreds of people - secular, religious and ultra-Orthodox, as well as tourists
took part in the traditional Birkat HaKohanim (Priestly
Blessing) at the Western Wall last Thursday morning.

The blessing, a Jewish prayer recited by Kohanim (Jewish priests in direct
patrilineal descent from Aaron), is regularly performed during the intermediate days of Passover and Sukkot.